Journal of Mobile Media

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By Peter Sinclair and Elena Biserna. voir la version française The major part of this special edition is based on the proceedings of Locus Sonus Symposium #8 Audio Mobility . The symposium assembled an international panel of artists, theoreticians and…

Justin Bennett reflects on his long series of audio walk projects that, spanning the last two and half decades, have “overwritten” urban space in many different ways. Experimenting with recorded sound, radio transmission and, more recently, locative media, he addresses historical, social, economical as well as environmental issues relating to specific sites.

Elena Biserna’s reflection starts with the act of walking. Her paper provides an introduction to the history of mobile-mediated listening-works from the 1980s onwards. By focusing on the redefinition of boundaries between aesthetic and everyday experiences, it considers three different ways of reshaping the relationship between the walking-listener and his/her environment.

Samuel Bordreuil takes us back to the 1980s – the days of Djs and sound systems and relates the way they conquered territories in Marseilles. In so doing, he addresses (social) commonality, sense of belonging, musical territorialization of urban space and its “dramatizing” effects.

Aisen Caro Chacin’s Echolocation Headphones offer bat vision to her audience – converging beams of ultra sound bounce of surfaces in the environment providing an intuitive but precise form of audio navigation that, aside from its aesthetic an ludic qualities, could also potentially be useful for blind people.

Owen Chapman explores the relationship between field recording and environmental awareness. He presents a mobile sound-mapping and soundscape project focused on an abandoned stretch of urban wilderness in Montréal.

Jean Cristofol challenges the dichotomy between map and probe with the idea that the latter, arguably, generates its own cartography.His paper provides an articulation between these two modes of audio mobility leading him to question the validity of traditional boundaries and geographical limits.

Laurent Di Biase proposes what might be considered as a practical embodiment of this idea. In a project produced during a residency leading up to the Locus Sonus symposium – Four Mobile Tracks – the path becomes the score as performers stream audio from the outside urban environment which Di Biase remixes live in the auditorium.

Murmures Urbains, by Emmanuel Guez and Xavier Boissarie, is a piece that generates a “theatre without walls” using instruction based protocols, developed on the platform Message situés. By delivering audio instructions, the project transforms the listener into a performer inviting him to play with social norms in public spaces.

Steve Jones renews the role of the busker by building on the accessibility and portability of mobile phones. The smart phone or tablet, like a harmonica that you carry in your pocket, becomes an instrument to accompany the wanderings of the contemporary “troubadour”.

Marie Muller mapped sounds of Aix en Provence during a Locus Sonus residency and in the resulting installation, the spectator can navigate in a schematic reconstruction of a city soundscape mapped to the volume of an empty space.

Gaetan Parsilhan’s (et al.) seeks to further sightless navigation to improve sonification design for guidance tasks. This study compares the efficiency of different sound parameter control strategies in relation to perception of localization.

Matthieu Saladin investigates the role of the ringtone in the neoliberal soundscape and the mobile phone as an “apparatus”. His project Sonnerie Publiques hijacks our mobile phones by offering downloadable ringtones that deliver “thought provoking” text to speech messages infiltrating the public sphere.

Dom Schlienger proposes the use of acoustic source localization principles (measuring acoustic time delays between loudspeakers and microphones) as a means for local positioning in spatially interactive applications.

Peter Sinclair speculates that the new power of calculation that we carry in our pockets might enable innovative methods for generating sound directly from the situation, rather than overlaying it with recorded sound.